The Kannada collection that won the Booker

On Our Bookshelf | May 2025

Dear readers,

Last week, Heart Lamp, a collection of Kannada short stories, was awarded the 2025 International Booker Prize. It’s the first work originally written in Kannada to be nominated and win, the first short story collection to take the prize, and the first time an Indian translator has been recognized with this honor.

Banu Mushtaq, a 77-year-old lawyer, activist, and writer from Karnataka, has been a formidable voice in regional literature for years. Her stories in Heart Lamp were written between 1990 and 2023, and delve into the lives of Muslim women in southern India, addressing themes of patriarchy, domestic violence, and communalism. She’s published multiple works in Kannada, but until now, none had been translated into English. Her translator, Deepa Bhasthi, a writer and essayist, has been a longtime advocate for Kannada literature.

This win echoed around the world. We’ve seen stories of Mushtaq’s husband and extended family staying up past midnight to watch the announcement live from their home in India, of bookstores in Bengaluru struggling to keep Heart Lamp in stock, and of Kannada readers feeling seen and celebrated on an international stage.

Awards are not everything—but there is a significance in this kind of story being recognized. Heart Lamp is not a sweeping epic or an export-ready tale of India. They’re brief, intimate, interior glimpses of everyday women and their quiet negotiations of survival. The collection is hyperlocal to this region and its Muslim community specifically. And Mushtaq and Bhasthi were not overnight successes—this win is the result of decades of work in the margins, now made visible.

When we started Brown Girl Bookshelf, it was with the hope that more people would read stories like this: authentic, even if niche, hard to categorize, and written by authors who have not historically shown up on prize lists or bestseller charts. We never expected that, in just a few years, we’d witness so many South Asian writers gaining global recognition:

• Shehan Karunatilaka (2022 Booker Prize winner, Seven Moons of Maali Almeida)

• Geetanjali Shree & Daisy Rockwell (2022 International Booker winners, Tombs of Sand)

• Sabaa Tahir (2022 National Book Award winner, All My Rage)

• Sarah Thankam Mathews (2022 National Book Award finalist, All This Could Be Different)

• Vauhini Vara (2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Immortal King Rao)

• Anuk Arudpragasam (2021 Booker Prize nominee, A Passage North)

None of these books are the same. They span genre, diaspora, country, language, audience. But what they share is a sense of literary ambition—writers creating on their own terms, translators and publishers taking risks, and readers responding to stories that don’t fit into neat molds. We’re still in awe that the community we built has grown during such a moment.

Until next time,

Mishika and Sri

Kaurs Reimagine edited by Meeta Kaur, Abinash Kaur, and Vineet Kaur

Reviewed by: Dilpreet Kainth

“Kaurs Reimagine” exemplifies the profound impact a community can have on storytelling and healing. Conceptualized by 24 Sikh women, this collection offers an authentic and often unseen look at Kaur women overcoming societal expectations and patriarchal structures. From love and infertility to identity, abuse, and otherness—these chapters invite us to pause, reflect, and find what grounds us.

As a Sikh Punjabi woman, I resonated with the chapters that highlighted stories of women speaking in a mother tongue that is often only heard at home. This is a gift to Sikh women, each writer inviting us into an honest look at their lives to learn how to stay true to one’s identity and especially Sikhi values. Each story feels like an open dialogue among friends, caretakers, and compassionate community.

In “The Path Reveals Itself,” readers follow the story of a woman who is on a journey to discover her self-worth after a toxic long distance relationship. In “Sweet Surrender,” readers learn how one writer seeks to find love and belonging, and ultimately takes us on a path of finding inner peace and happiness, beyond those societal pressures. “The Power Within,” reveals the impact of feeling othered from the ‘crowd,’ and welcoming a truth where we can be enough.

While reading these cherished pages, I also gave myself time to pause, and reflect, an approach I’d recommend to other readers. This book may unearth difficult memories we haven’t granted ourselves permission to truly understand. At times I felt nervous to continue reading because some stories touched a nerve more than others but I’m grateful for the opportunity that this collection has provided for us to heal and move forward.

Kaurs Reimagine is a tremendous resource for young Sikh women, but also any person who has felt othered or pressured by expectations that don’t meet their own individual values and struggles. With each chapter, I found myself wondering how things would have been different if I had this collection to turn to as a young Sikh kid. Now, I find myself wondering how this will carry us forward and support us through any healing that’s yet to come.

📚 Get your copy of “Kaurs Reimagine.”

Outside Women by Roohi Choudhry

Reviewed by: Nandini Erodula

“No one has ever recorded women without men to accompany them”—a haunting assertion about history that lies at the heart of “Outside Women.” Roohi Choudhry explores the strength, resilience, and complexity of two migrant women. The story delves into the lives of Sita and Hajra, separated by time and geography, yet united by their shared struggles with patriarchy, colonialism, and their pursuit of justice.

The novel beautifully spans generations and continents. Sita’s story begins as a young woman from India in the 1890s, when she is thrust into an unfamiliar world after being brought to South Africa as an indentured servant. A century later, Hajra flees her home in Peshawar, Pakistan, after witnessing a brutal act intended to harm her. Now in New York City as an academic scholar, Hajra comes across in her research a photo of Sita — a striking image of a woman laughing in a protest. This sparks her fixation with understanding Sita’s life, leading Hajra to embark on a journey to South Africa to uncover more about Sita.

Along the way, Hajra faces many challenges in tracing Sita’s life and heritage. She is confronted with the erasure of women who exist beyond the margins of patriarchy, and the effects of colonialism: “[The] English print cannot help us read the pain snaking across our family trees.”

Through Sita and Hajra’s journeys, Choudhry gives voice to the stories of “outside women” who have long been silenced, offering a powerful reminder of their unbreakable spirit and the transformative power of stepping outside the walls that try to hold them in. Choudhry invites us to reflect on the legacies we inherit and the lives we, as South Asian women, seek to build in a world that often wishes to confine us.

📚 Get your copy of “Outside Women.”

The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi

I’d never given cults much thought—until I read Veena Dinavahi’s memoir. After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Before, I figured you joined willingly. Maybe they even handed you a welcome packet. Dinavahi upends that belief entirely. Her story shows how cults rarely ask for decisions—they dissolve them, offering belonging while quietly eroding your sense of self.

“The True Happiness Company” charts her descent into a self-help cult disguised as therapy. At 19, battling depression and suicidal thoughts, Dinavahi and her family turn to Bob Lyon, a self-styled spiritual healer in rural Georgia who promises transformation through daily phone calls and total obedience. He names his operation “The True Happiness Company” and, disturbingly, insists on being called “Daddy.” Yes, really.

I read this book in two sittings—not because it was easy, but because I needed to know that she got out—that, at some point, Dinavahi would see the manipulation for what it was and find her way back to herself. I needed to distance myself from Bob Lyon too—his unsettling presence and his deeply warped definition of healing. Like Veena, I wanted out. Far, far out.

For anyone who’s ever scoffed at how people “fall for this stuff,” this book is a necessary pause. It invites readers to swap judgment for curiosity, and to consider how easily the search for help can be weaponized. Dinavahi doesn’t ask for pity—just a little more nuance. She unpacks what manipulation can look like in real time: how trust is eroded, how language is twisted, and how coercion often masquerades as care. But just as powerfully, she offers a path back—one that’s rooted in reclaiming your instincts, rebuilding self-trust, and recognizing your own voice again.

This is one of those books that veers into “wow, she really shared everything” territory. By the end, I wasn’t just in awe—I was floored. This is a lot to offer up to the world. But that’s exactly the point: Veena takes back the narrative before anyone else tries to tell it for her. It’s a defiant, radical act of self-definition. And once you read her book, you’ll understand just how necessary it was.

📚 Get your copy of “The True Happiness Company.”

Amma by Saraid de Silva

As a newly married woman who has immigrated to a new country, I miss my mother every day. This book intensified that longing.

Not "mom," but more familiarly: amma, mama, ammu, ma, mummy. These names—common in South Asian households—hold a quiet intimacy. The title alone felt instantly familiar.

Saraid de Silva’s “Amma” is a sweeping, intergenerational novel that follows three women from the Fernando family across time and continents. It begins in 1951 Singapore, where ten-year-old Josephina commits a violent act in self-defense—a trauma that quietly reverberates through the family’s emotional inheritance. In 1980s Invercargill, New Zealand, her daughter Sithara comes of age while navigating racism and domestic abuse. And in 2018, Sithara's daughter, Annie, a queer woman estranged from her mother, seeks out her uncle Suri in London to piece together the family's fractured history.

The morning after I finished the book, I sat in my office chair and cried. This is a story that makes you consider not just your mother, but all the women who came before—what they endured, what they gave, and what they couldn’t. I thought of both of my grandmothers—not because their lives paralleled the novel, but because the book reminded me of the fragility of time: the moments we shared and the ones we lost.

What I loved most about “Amma” is how it portrays motherhood as something messy, evolving, and human. De Silva doesn’t idealize mothers; she writes them as women first: with ambitions, flaws, and pasts that are often buried beneath duty. The novel gently peels back these layers with care, showing how each generation inherits both visible and invisible wounds—passed down not just through words, but through absence, gesture, and choices made in love or survival. It reminds us that our mothers and grandmothers were once young too—they made mistakes, they learned, they changed.

No summary can fully capture the emotions this book stirs. This novel is pure feeling.

Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones by Priyanka Mattoo

Reading Priyanka Mattoo’s “Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones” feels like catching up with your most effortlessly witty friend—the one who can make you laugh so hard you cry, then casually drop a revelation that stays with you for days. With a perfect balance of wit and warmth, Mattoo envelops readers in her family and childhood, ongoing explorations of identity, and a personal narrative about the impact of the decades-long political turmoil in Kashmir. From her childhood visits to her bustling, multi-generational Kashmiri home, to growing up as a strong-willed brown girl in Saudi Arabia, to her wonderfully relatable adulthood navigating a blended cultural household, parenthood, and her relationship with her parents, every essay shines with Mattoo’s voice, as warm as it is incisive.

The essays range from serious topics to niche observations, but every one endears readers to Mattoo and her family deeper. One minute, readers are stunned by the heartbreak of the destruction of her family’s home in Kashmir; the next, they’re laughing at her sharp and endearing take on arranged dating within the Kashmiri community—and grinning at the unexpected twist that she ultimately married a Jewish man with whom she shares a passion for building dioramas.

What sets this book apart is its authenticity. When I interviewed Mattoo at the South Asian Literature and Arts Festival, she mentioned that this work doubles as a personal archive and love letter to her family. That intention shines through. The humor feels like an inside joke you’re lucky enough to be let in on, and with this understanding, Mattoo’s voice is self-effacing rather than self-indulgent.

Mattoo is also quietly subversive to what this book could have been—and perhaps is still expected to be by some—a “refugee memoir.” Yes, there is grief and loss, most notably surrounding her family’s Kashmiri home, but there’s also joy, love, and resilience. Mattoo shared that this was not intentional; she writes in the way her people live: finding a mix of tenderness, richness, and humor in all of life’s experiences.

📚 Get your copy of “Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones.”

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